Reply #4: What is the economic basis of Los Angeles?

[FarCenter]

San Diego has the Navy. Bay Area has Silicon Valley, wine country, and more Navy.

Los Angeles had oil fields, but they are now fairly exhausted. It had aerospace, but that has faded and Northrup and Lockheed, etc. are mature if not shrinking in California. It has the movies and some media, but that is undergoing a transition as digital and new media are impacting the business. It has shipping, but not much employment is needed to move containers off ships and on to trains and tractor trailers. There's a big financial center in Orange Country (e.g. Pimco, et al) but that is tenuous in the current environment.

Building and flipping houses was the big boom, but that is over unless some primary economic activity can be revived.